Bye bye, Goldie.

The past couple of weeks, I had noticed our fish (at first named Fishy-fish, then Goldie) hadn't been eating all his food. Today, after I changed his water, he couldn't find which way was up. I hoped perhaps he was stunned and it was temporary, but when we came back this afternoon, Goldie was still and no longer breathing.

I waited until we were finished lunch, then broke the news to my daughter. She seemed OK at first but then I let her say goodbye as we flushed Goldie to his final resting place. She said goodbye and started crying. We hugged and cried together. She offered me a tissue. Then we had to face the empty tank. With some spelling help from me, she wrote a goodbye sign; it says "Bye-bye Goldie. Love, A----." I asked her if she wanted to draw a picture of Goldie at the bottom and she said yes. She drew a lovely little fish, cried some more, and let it go. I taped the note to the front of the tank.

I told her we were going to take a break from having a fish for a while; we could visit them in the pet stores for a while and wait until we could get a bigger tank that would hold two or three fish to keep each other company. She seemed OK, but I expect more tears over the next few days.